Turning Tables
by melindaWRITER
Summary: Castle is usually the one going to Kate's apartment to cheer her up but, when Alexis's first pre-holiday season away from home leaves Castle feeling blue, Kate decides to turn the tables on him in hopes to restore his holiday spirit!


For Rose, the Castle to my Beckett, in a friendship sort of way. I thought I'd turn the tables around...

* * *

Kate glanced at her watch nervously. It was only 12:30. Maybe Castle had had some kind of meeting he forgot to tell her about, maybe he slept through his alarm after a long nights sleep?

Whatever reason Kate could think of for Castle not showing up at the precinct tomorrow instantly shattered the moment she pressed her ear up to the door.

_It's a damn cold night,_

_Trying to figure out his life..._

Kate opened the door with her key and found Castle sitting on the couch. He was surrounded by boxes upon boxes of brown boxes. If Kate hadn't know Alexis better, she would have assumed that she was getting kicked out of school and moving back home by the sheer number of boxes there were. She stepped quietly towards the couch where Castle was sitting, surrounded by chocolate wrappers, singing the... whatever this was... while he attached what appeared to be little angel dollies to white fairly lights.

"_Won't you take me by the hand_

_take me somewhere new,_

_don't know who you are but I-" _

"Hey Castle!" Kate interrupted, his loud, out of key stopping instantly.

"I was just, I was... uh" He floundered, trying to find the universal remote and not succeeding.

"What were you listening to anyways?" She asked him, her voice full of amusement, her eyes full of comfort.

"Avril Lavigne" He started indignantly, "She's actually still really popular... amongst full grown men in Canada so..." Kate offered him a small smile, before joining him on the couch.

"So why didn't you come in today, Castle?" She asked him, placing her hand on his knee.

"It snowed today." He answered simply, "Every year since kindergarten Alexis would stay home on the first day of snow, and we would decorate the loft. We would bring in Christmas, no matter how early... or we'd do it on the first tuesday of december, which ever came first."

"And now that she's in college..." Kate continued, understanding what was bothering her partner.

"She said that she was too busy to miss class, but that she would come by after dinner time to put the angel on the tree."

"Um Castle, incase you didn't notice, you don't exactly have one yet." She said, doing her best to put on her half humour, half teasing voice she knew he loved.

"Well that was also on today's agenda..." He said, not looking at her.

"Well, I do have some good news" She replied, stepping in front of him.

"Yeah, and that would be what?" He asked, looking up at her doubtfully.

"I unfortunately contracted food poisoning from something in the precinct fridge." She said, smiling her one million watt smile.

All of a sudden Castle was on his feet, with worry.

"Kate, how is that good, sit down, can I get you anything?" He was spouting out words, a mile a minute, trying in vain to get the detective to sit down. When she wouldn't move or answer him, he looked back up at her face, at her smile and began to smile as well.

"You don't really have food poisoning do you?" He asked, her, getting excited at the prospect of Kate playing hooky to be with him.

"For a civilian assistant volunteer homicide detective, that sure took you a long time to figure out..." Kate said, turning her back on the writer, heading towards the door again.

"Where are you going!" She shouted after her, scrambling to clean up all of the wrappers and pieces of tissue paper on the couch.

"To your car, and then we're going to the nursery... but for goodness sake Castle, turn off this garbage, and put on a pair of pants!" She shouted slamming the door behind him.

Castle struggled into a pair of jeans, muttering something about the genius behind the Canadian born pop singer... before he half tripped, half intentionally shut the sound system off manually.

_Won't you take me by the hand, take me somewhere new _was the last thing he heard as he bolted out of his apartment and dashed down the hallway.

* * *

A/N I'm not exactly sure how this turned into a christmas fic but I'm going with it. Apparently it's my new tradition :) And sorry this is so short, subsequent chapters will be longer!

Oh and Rose, I know you don't like Christmas, but I figured in the spirit of both our first christmases in a way, this would be appropriate... (my first actual christmas, your first Castle one :P )


End file.
